


Icarus

by Eirenare



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Rey Needs A Hug, Temporary Character Death, it's always darkest before the dawn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-25 04:30:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21350281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eirenare/pseuds/Eirenare
Summary: “Stay here. I’ll come back for you.”Ben’s words were steady as they exited his mouth, and their familiarity made Rey’s stomach lurch sickeningly.“No!”, she refused, trying and failing to move her paralyzed body. “Don’t do this, Ben!” Tears started rolling down her cheeks, yet Ben didn’t falter. “You can’t! Please!”
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Reylo
Comments: 14
Kudos: 127





	Icarus

“Stay here. I’ll come back for you.”

Ben’s words were steady as they exited his mouth, and their familiarity made Rey’s stomach lurch sickeningly.

“No!”, she refused, trying and failing to move her paralyzed body. “Don’t do this, Ben!” Tears started rolling down her cheeks, yet Ben didn’t falter. “You can’t! _ Please! _”

He watched, unmoving, as Rey’s mind rebelled furiously against his control. Through their bond he could feel her despair, her pain, her rage, all of it because of him, and as much as Ben tried not to cave in, he had to blink twice to keep his stinging eyes from crying. He steeled further the walls he had built around his side of their bond, intent on not allowing her to feel even an ounce of the heartbreak and fear tearing apart his chest.

“But I have to”, he said, and this time his whisper came out as barely more than a croak. “I’ll come back, sweetheart. I promise.”

“Liar!”, she howled, frantically pushing the Force further against Ben. “Liar, liar, liar!”, broke her voice, gradually turning to full-body sobs as her hazel eyes pierced him.

Without saying a thing he gave a hesitant step towards Rey, secured in the Millennium Falcon’s last escape pod by will of Ben’s own powers alone, yet he ended up turning his back to her.

He was ready to walk away, not wanting to delay the inevitable longer and knowing every second was precious, vital if he wanted for this to work—but her weeping and the waves of feelings surging from her kept him rooted to the spot, short of breath, heart hammering painfully below his ribcage.

Ben glanced over his shoulder to Rey, and his gaze softened. He leaned towards her, his gloveless hand caressing her cheek, and lowered himself to press his lips to her forehead in a tender kiss that lingered on. Then for a moment, without letting Rey go, he allowed for his side of the bond to open and bare his soul at her—to tell her, make her feel what he was sure he wouldn’t be able to put into words at that moment without choking. Ben choked nonetheless when Rey instantly, desperately pushed her own feelings forwards to him, and he bit back a sob.

“Ben…” she pleaded, the emotions coursing through her overwhelming her just as much as hers overwhelmed him. “Ben please, there has to be another way…”

When an explosion erupted way too close to the barely functional Falcon, making it rock violently, Ben rushed to close off his side of the bond once more and withdrew. Clenching his jaw, he took a last look at Rey to remind him of his purpose.

“Until we meet again.”

Without ceremony he punched the buttons next to the escape pod to seal it and send it away, trying to ignore her last desperate calls of his name through their bond.

Scared yet resolute, without turning back to look at Rey being ejected from their ship, he strode to the pilot’s seat.

It was time to let the past die—to kill it.

—

From inside the pod, floating further away, the Falcon became but a blur to Rey as it kept accelerating, gaining momentum, and headed toward the little armored ship where the last remains of all that was wicked and evil rested—ramming it without hesitation.

In the silence of space, the only thing Rey was able to hear was her own agonizing scream as she felt Ben instantly slipping from her fingers in the Force, her eyes locked on the explosion that bloomed from where the Falcon had been just a second ago.

She raked her shaking fingers down her arms until she drew blood, frantically kicking feet and legs against that wretched white cage, crying her heart out at the gaping wound that was now her bond with Ben.

Little to nothing did she care that all the old Star Destroyers were now starting to drift aimlessly and out of control, bereft of their sinister Sith master. Rey’s only focus was on the slowly expanding wreckage of the Falcon.

_ “I promise” _, had said Ben.

Rey wanted so badly to believe he would keep his promise. She desperately _ needed _ to believe, against all logic, that he would still be alive—yet feeling the Force bleed, howling with the loss of Ben and her raw pain like an echo, told her otherwise.

She gave a specially vicious round of kicks to the pod, cursing Ben and herself, cursing these stupid wars and the Force. Sniffing and squeezing her eyes shut, she let her head fall down against plastic and wept.

It didn’t take long for Rey to see the Resistance’s main vessel hovering over her, its tractor beam effortlessly taking her to the hangar bay. As it did so she caught a glimpse of a little ally ship inspecting the errant ruins of the Falcon, scouring—for what, really? There was nothing to retrieve from there… Not with an explosion such as that one. Ben was gone.

Rey’s breath caught in her throat at the thought but still, in a last ditch effort, she sent tendrils of her mind to search for Ben’s familiar Force signature.

She found nothing.

Rey was quickly taken out of the pod. She saw Finn, Poe and Rose rushing to crouch beside her, their faces pale and full of shock and worry, but it was as if their words were a foreign language. Her hazy, scarred mind couldn’t focus on them. All that she could think of was Ben. _ Ben, Ben, Ben. _ Her Ben. Tormented, loving, stupid Ben.

They pulled her for an embrace, hands caressing her hair and rubbing her back, broken words of comfort floating around her, but none of it mattered.

For minutes Rey simply let them do whatever they did, to examine her, to try and console her. There were questions that her friends stopped from being asked, comments that they sushed—not that she would reply, anyways. Curled up on the cold durasteel with a heating blanket wrapped around her, her blurry eyes watched without really watching as people kept arriving and checking up on her, from medics to friends.

With her back turned to the hangar’s gate and her mind not really there, Rey took a moment too long to notice the shift in atmosphere, more and more gazes fixed to her form—no, behind her. The chorus of whispers crescendoed and was joined by gasps. She heard the rumble of the medics’ loud footsteps rushing past her and barking orders, and from the corner of her eye she caught Rose covering her mouth with a hand.

Rey felt her stomach drop. She knew what she was going to find if she turned her face—there was no way that Ben would be alive. She had felt him _ die _. She knew it would destroy her if she turned back.

But she turned nonetheless, and for a moment, everything around her seemed to come to a halt. Time itself, everyone around her, her lungs—her heart. A fresh wave of tears bled down her damp cheeks.

Lying on the metal plating mere metres away from her, Ben’s too still form was being examined.

“Ben”, she whimpered.

It took everything from Rey to find the strength to even lift from the floor and drag herself to him, refusing the help of her friends. She slowly closed the distance that separated her from the hollow husk of the only person to ever truly know her.

A roaring silence befell the hangar as she leaned in to see him, the medics around them dispersing and taking away with them medical instruments that would be useless now.

The sight punched her in the gut hard: peeking through dark ripped clothes, Ben’s too pale skin was bloodied and marred with cuts and bruises everywhere, little shards of crystal and metal still engraved in his flesh. Rey extended a shaking hand to his face, jolting at the coldness of it before letting her fingers lovingly caress his cheek, brush away mussed black locks from his brow. Ben’s expression was so peaceful it almost looked like a carbon copy of when he fell asleep by her side. Almost.

This was going to be the last time she would see it, that she would see his face._ Him _. After all they had been through, after all the fighting and tears and screams and the little moments of peace between them, after almost losing each other before—now she really had lost him.

Suddenly, it dawned on Rey that there was no way a human body could stand an explosion like the Falcon’s without disintegrating… And then Ben’s words echoed in her head.

Rey let out a short laugh, shaky and broken.

“You came back”, she rasped.

Gently enveloping him with her arms, cradling Ben’s head against her neck, she noticed the trace of Force under her fingertips and it brought the truth to the surface.

“You tried to shield yourself, didn’t you, Ben?”, she muttered. “You really wanted to survive… To come back home…”

_ To me, _ she didn’t say out loud. _ Back for me. _

“Please”, she prayed. To the Force, to every Jedi before her, to everything sacred in this galaxy, she didn’t care—she just wanted for Ben to live. “Please, give him back. Please, please, please…”, she kept repeating, on and on, under her breath.

For some time she had thought Ben hadn’t wanted to save himself, that life was a burden he didn’t care to uphold anymore, guilt-ridden and torn apart as she had seen him—felt him. Even when they finally got to be on the same side of war, together and with Ben slowly rebuilding his life and himself, Rey still sensed that anguish and the doubts and fears that accompanied it. Such a deep suffering wouldn’t go down without a fight.

_ Like Ben_.

She was so, so proud of him, for how far he had come after so many years of drowning in the darkness.

“You were the best thing I ever had, you know?”, she babbled between sobs, joining their foreheads.

She lowered her puffy eyes to take a good look at his face—Force, what she wouldn’t give to see his brown eyes returning her gaze once more. To see his lips curving upwards in a smile before leaning in for a kiss, the blush that always started in his ears before spreading to his cheeks, the way he would arch an eyebrow at times when he exhibited his personal brand of humor.

It was time to let go, and Rey knew that… but her hands kept holding Ben tight, fiercely fighting back any semblance of reason.

Rey, who had never given up any little thing life deigned to give her, certainly wasn’t going to give up on Ben so easily. Clinging to him desperately, she squeezed her eyes shut as silent prayers, pleas and yells echoed in her mind—she shoved them through the Force along with her feelings, with the future she had seen for them, with the future she had _ hoped _ they would share, holding on to a last sliver of hope.

For minutes that felt like forever she stayed like this, frozen in time, in heartache and waning hope. Waiting for any signal, for any response to her begging. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Always waiting… 

Until, eventually, she had to let Ben lie on the durasteel once more. Exhaustion had caught up to her, and now she was just unable to hoist him up anymore. She wasn’t even sure how long she would be able to keep herself conscious.

Through a veil of tears Rey stared at Ben for a long moment, and then to her knees. Something warm touched her shoulder, and she turned back to find Finn giving it a little squeeze, his countenance serious and his eyes too shiny.

“Are you ready?”, he asked her gently, his voice hoarse.

Rey turned to look back at Ben, unmoving just where she left him—and then nodded. She allowed for Rose and Poe to help her to her feet, for Finn to protectively wrap an arm around her waist. And just as if she had been sentenced to death (feeling as if she was), Rey started dragging her feet away from Ben.

Forcing herself not to steal yet another last glimpse at him she kept on walking, hearing footsteps and the tell-tale clatter of a stretcher behind her as both the medics and the Resistance crew went back to their work.

Rey was about to step out of the hangar when she heard it:

“There’s pulse!”

It took her a moment to understand through the haze in her head, but when she did her heart was bursting with too many emotions and her unstable legs were already darting in a frenzy to where she had just come from.

Breathless, she collapsed beside Ben just as he was slowly blinking his eyes open.

Rey had never witnessed such a lovely sight—she drank it with an eagerness that put to shame the need for water of any desert traveler in existence. Brown met hazel as their gazes locked, and a feeble smile appeared on that face she just wanted so badly to smother in kisses. She smiled back at him, unable to speak through her constricted throat. But if she was looking at Ben with the same intensity and love he was so openly showing (and she was sure she did), then for now they could do without words even if their bond was severed.

He mumbled something however, too low for her to hear, so she lowered her ear close to his mouth.

Warmth welcomed her cheek as his lips pressed against it, and Rey didn’t miss the slight touch of smugness in Ben’s voice as he whispered a late reply:

“I do.” Rey was rendered speechless then, and Ben took the advantage to continue. “And you, mine."

Rey felt her eyes water again, and she weakly slapped a pale broad shoulder in retaliation before ducking over a laughing Ben to softly claim his lips.

Suddenly she felt something brushing against her mind, and she closed her eyes. Something warm, known, safe. Ben’s mind. Rey send forth her own to meet it, allowing them to touch and entangle, to rebuild their Force bond.

When Rey opened her eyes, retreating, her smile widened.

“Hey.”

“Hi”, he chuckled.

Leaning their heads, their lips met in the middle for the most unhurried of kisses as they allowed for the waves of their thoughts and feelings crash against each other’s shores.

Later on Rey would have time enough to feel embarrassed that she had just smooched Ben in front of a good number of returning crew members, medics, her friends and half the chain of command that apparently had been observing from the main control room of the hangar—and Ben would have time enough to tease her for it.

But for now they just sat beside each other as they tended to Ben, sharing under the heating blankets all the kisses and caresses they thought would never feel again.

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow I've been able to finish another little fic, and I just can't believe it. I don't know what's gotten into me but, hey, I'll take it gladly and try to keep it up.
> 
> Honestly I've been craving to write something emotionally intense and I hope I'd achieved it! The idea stems from a little frame I saw on the latest TROS trailer, in which you can see an explosion in space close to a Star Destroyer—my mind just went to this because "angst" is basically my second name.
> 
> Anyways, if you're interested the next fic I'll upload (aiming for next week, maybe the end of this one but I'm not too confident on it) should be the 1st part of a long TROS fic trying to imagine how the movie could be.
> 
> Thanks for reading guys, and have a nice day! <3


End file.
